Not as scary as I thought, nor that innovative - but good nevertheless

Rating: 8/10 (18 November 2002)

Well, after reading all the hype, I was expecting a jump-fright-fest. And given that I couldn't sleep after Blair Witch Project and Alien, I'm a person that's very easily jumped. But it was nowhere near as "bad" on that front. Which may be a bad thing for some people.
The major innovative twist was the oft-quoted seeing London empty - although if I was Danny Boyle, and managed to shut down a street in London for 4 minutes at a time, I'd be equipping some camera people with proper *film* cameras as well as DV ones. Imagine how much more powerful those scenes would have been if he'd brought along a 35mm camera as well as a cheapo DV one.
Speaking of which, the general decision to go with DV was - I think - a mistake. You're never really that frightened (in the conventional sense) of anything since you can barely make anything out! Or maybe that was our low-quality print.
On the plus side, the characters were reasonably fleshed out, and you just had enough time to like most of them.
A couple of new twists on the apocalyptic genre world certainly makes this well worth watching. But make sure you leave time to go for a coffee or a drink afterwards!